The Hand from A-Z: The Essentials of Palmistry
by Judith Hipskind
Posted by: DailyOM
Perhaps the biggest surprise about palmistry, especially for beginners, is the amount of detail involved in decoding the hands' meaning. Contrary to the common idea that palmistry concerns only the lines in the hand, a good analysis requires much more. Lines are at their best when they are supported by all the features in the hand.
To get the whole picture, lines must be analyzed together with areas of the palm known as mounts, with the length of the palm and fingers, and the shape of the fingertips and nails. Each hand has a certain shape and thickness, as do the fingers. Each hand has its own consistency, feeling soft or hard to the touch. Each set of fingers has an overall flexibility, and every finger has its own unique degree of flexibility.
How do we add up all these features and draw a picture of a person from the hands? The complete approach to reading hands is outlined in the first half of this book. An explanation is given for all the features found in the hands.
However, some readers may want to go directly to the Dictionary of Traits to read about personality traits revealed by the hands, without learning the whole subject of palmistry. If you are one of those readers, whether you are a beginner or a pro, you will benefit from a review of all the points entailed in a complete hand analysis, as presented in the first half of this book.
But first, there are two keys to successful work with the hands. The ability to be observant is one of them. What better way to start a hand analysis than to notice a hand's size or width or length? Even though a beginner might say, "How do I know if I'm seeing a big hand or a little one, a thick hand or a thin one?" just a few minutes spent looking at a few pairs of hands will instantly reveal obvious differences such as size and shape.
The second key to successful hand analysis is an ability to compare and contrast each feature you see. Which hand is bigger? Looking at two sets of hands at once, you can compare them, but if you happen to look at the hands of one person at a time, you will need to carry a mental image in your head of what you have seen before. That's rather like being a good card player and remembering what card was just played. That very card, if you can recall it, might seal your strategy in the game. So, too, with hands. Anything you can remember of what you have seen before will increase your skill as a hand analyst.
Another valuable tool in the world of hand analysis is a system to organize all the clues you find in a hand. The order in which you deal with all the hand's features can be very important. The lengthiest analysis of hands starts with the back of the hands, if you use the system presented in this book. With a shorter analysis, such as looking up individual traits in the dictionary, the order of the clues is still important, as we will see in the Guide to the Dictionary. Before you do that, let's look at the summary of the long way to analyze hands.
Complete System of Analysis
To get the more obvious clues first from the hands, have your clients put their hands down on a flat surface in order to allow you to see the backs of their hands. This is the order of what you will notice (the page numbers in parentheses tell you where to find a diagram that illustrates that feature):
Body Language of the Hand
1. The spacing between the two hands as they rest on a table (p. 30).
2. The spaces between the fingers (p. 29).
3. The alignment of the thumbs (p. 30).
4. The length and width of the nails (p. 38).
5. The shape of the nails (p. 38).
6. The color underneath the nails (p. 34).
7. Touch the back of your client's hands to determine if the skin is smooth, medium, or coarse in texture.
8. Lift up your client's hands and check the flexibility of the fingers, where they join the palm, at the fingertips, and at the thumb to see if the thumb moves easily or is stiff (p. 46).
9. Have your client hold his or her hands up. Notice whether all the fingers stand straight or do some of them bend inward or outward?
Divisions of the Palm
10. To understand a larger view of the palm's areas, divide the palm in half, with a line running down the middle of the middle finger to the bottom of the palm. The thumb half of the palm represents a person's conscious energy, and the little finger half represents a person's unconscious energy. This information becomes useful when you look at the individual areas of the palm called mounts (p. 107).
These ten points give you a solid foundation for understanding the hands. With them, you have already uncovered much about the person you are analyzing. You are ready to proceed to the palm itself. Next you determine:
11. The shape of the palm (p. 68).
12. The size of the palm, its thickness or thinness (p. 68).
13. The shape of the fingertips (p. 73).
14. The overall length of the fingers (p. 91).
15. The size of the fingers, whether they are thick or thin (p. 75).
16. The length of the fingers' three sections (the phalanges) (p. 90).
17. The length of each individual finger (p. 91).
The mounts and their marks are powerful guides to a person's temperament, energy, and talent. If you understand the mounts, you have an expert view of a person's potential. Where that potential will lead is the question, and the answer is in the lines.
18. The mounts or individual areas of the palm (p. 107).
19. The marks on the mounts (p. 108).
Lines play a unique role, defining character, temperament, energy, and health, as the other features do. The lines are also used to project events on a life path and the shape that path might take.
20. The marks found on the lines (p. 118).
21. The lines themselves, their appearance and their variations (p. 118).
The Major Lines
22. The Life Line. We begin with the life line because every hand has one. Warning: No life line predicts length of life. See page 122 to find out what a "short" life line means. The life line is a visual graph of much of our life path (p. 131).
23. The Head Line, an indicator of talent and how you think (p. 154-157).
24. The Heart Line, a guide to emotions and health (p. 141-145).
25. The Fate Line, a clue to your resources and what you want to accomplish
The Minor Lines
26. The Apollo Line, a singular mark of creativity and a rewarding life (p. 174).
27. The Mercury Line, an aid to business ability and health (p. 174).
The meanings for all of the items in this outline are found in the front part of this book. If you master all of them, you will have the equivalent of a Ph.D. in palmistry!
You can choose to focus on just a few of the features in this outline and still get a remarkable portrait of the person you are reading. You can decide what you want to know: What area of life experience is of most interest to you in this person's hands? Do you want to know if the person is a good friend, if the person would be a good mate? Are you compatible with this person? Would this person make a good teacher, boss, or colleague? What is this person like? Energetic or not, determined or not, ambitious or not, loving or not? You can discover any of this in just a few steps by using only the ten points below to analyze their hands.
Palmistry is not so mystical a subject as some might suppose. Think about this: every object in the world has a size, a shape, a length, and a color. Consistency, texture, and flexibility play their role, too. Consider the following basic points for a moment.
Examples of these features in everyday use include the fact that size, shape, length, and color tell you whether you are looking at an elephant or a lion. Consistency lets you know whether dinner is undercooked or overcooked. Texture defines a rough or smooth piece of cloth, while flexibility helps you decide whether a curtain rod is strong enough to hold heavy drapes.
A hand's size reveals the lens through which you view the world-focusing on the big picture or on the gritty details. A hand's shape and length refer to various types of temperament, as does color. Color, however, goes further, and speaks about your energy, momentum, and health, and highlights the active, progressive areas of your life. The consistency of your hand also offers a commentary on your health and momentum. The texture of your skin seen on the back of the hand shows the degree of sensitivity with which you approach the world, and it also diagnoses your stamina. Flexibility in a hand acts as a straightforward indicator of that very trait in your personality. In palmistry, gestures refer to how you hold your fingers as you use your hands. Your hands in motion as you go about your everyday tasks reveal clues to your feelings and needs. A small list of gestures and their meanings is found on page 188.
When you look at the dictionary and see how these features work to produce a portrait of your personality traits, you will be amazed.
© Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.
Book Excerpt, Miscellaneous, Divination, Palmistry